Metal catalyzed coupling reactions of aryl bromides, aryl iodides, and aryl pseudohalides (e.g., triflates) with various substrates is a general method employed for the formation of C--C and C--N bonds. Prior art methods generally cannot employ aryl chlorides as feedstock for these chemical transformations, and require the use of more expensive aryl bromides and aryl iodides. The use of aryl chlorides as chemical feedstock in coupling chemistry has proven difficult but would economically benefit a number of industrial processes. The few prior art methods that can employ aryl chlorides use expensive, air-sensitive phosphine ligands. See in this connection Old et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc., 1998, 120, 9722-9723, and Littke and Fu, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl., 1998, 37, 3387-3388, which describe phosphine-modified, palladium-mediated Suzuki coupling reactions which employ aryl chlorides as substrates. The use of a bulky phosphine (e.g. tri(tert-butyl)phosphine) or phosphine-containing moiety (e.g., di(cyclohexyl)phosphino) in ancillary ligation was shown to be fundamental in triggering the observed catalytic behavior. In addition, these phosphine ligands are often difficult to remove from the process product.
Nucleophilic N-heterocyclic carbenes, the imidazoline-2-ylidenes (sometimes commonly called imidazol-2-ylidenes) or so-called "phosphine mimics", have attracted considerable attention as possible alternatives for the widely used phosphine ligands in homogeneous catalysis. A primary advantage of these ligands is that an excess of the ligand is not required. It appears that these ligands do not dissociate from the metal center, thus preventing aggregation of the catalyst to yield the bulk metal. Further, these imidazoline-2-ylidene carbenes also appear to be more thermally stable than phosphines.